Hashima Island, Japan. Abandoned city-island Hashima

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

Throughout history, mankind has built a huge number of cities and majestic structures, which later turned out to be abandoned. One of these places is the city-island of Hashima. For fifty years, this piece of land was the most densely populated on the entire planet: literally everything was teeming with people, and life was in full swing. However, the situation has changed: Hasima Island has been abandoned for decades. What happened to him? Why doesn't anyone live there anymore?

About the island

The last local resident of Hasima stepped on the deck of the ship leaving for Nagasaki on April 20, 1974. Since then, only rare seagulls have lived in high-rise buildings built at the dawn of the twentieth century…

Hashima Island, legends about which today go around the world, is located in the south of Japan, in the East China Sea, fifteen kilometers from Nagasaki. Its name is translated from Japanese as "border island", also by Hashimucalled Gunkanjima - "battleship island". The fact is that back in the 1920s, journalists from a local newspaper noticed that Hasima in silhouette resembles a huge battleship Tosa, which at that time was being built by the Mitsubishi Corporation at the shipyard in Nagasaki. And although the plans to make the battleship the flagship of the Japanese Navy did not come true, the "ship" nickname was firmly attached to the island.

However, Hasima did not always look so impressive. Until the end of the nineteenth century, it was one of the many rocky islands in the vicinity of Nagasaki, hardly suitable for normal life and occasionally visited only by local birds and fishermen.

Change

Everything changed during the 1880s. Japan then experienced industrialization, in which coal became the most valuable resource. On the island of Takashima, adjacent to Hashima, alternative sources of raw materials were developed that could provide for the rapidly developing metallurgical industry of Nagasaki. The success of the Takashima mines contributed to the fact that the first mine was founded on Hashim soon, in 1887, by the Fukahori family clan. In 1890, the Mitsubishi concern bought the island, and the rapid development of its natural resources began.

As time went on, the country needed more and more coal… Mitsubishi, with almost unlimited financial resources, developed a project for underwater fossil fuel mining at Hasima. In 1895, a new mine was opened here, having a depth of 199 meters, and in 1898 another one. Ultimately under the island and the sea surrounding it,formed a real labyrinth of underwater underground workings up to six hundred meters below sea level.

Construction

The Mitsubishi concern used waste rock extracted from the mines to increase the territory of Hasima. A plan was developed to build an entire city on the island to house the miners and staff. This was due to the desire to reduce costs, because it was necessary to deliver shifts here from Nagasaki daily by sea.

So, as a result of the “recapture” of the area from the Pacific Ocean, Hasima Island has increased to 6.3 hectares. The length from west to east was 160 meters, and from north to south - 480 meters. The Mitsubishi company in 1907 surrounded the territory with a reinforced concrete wall, which served as an obstacle to the erosion of the land area by frequent typhoons and the sea.

The large-scale development of Khashima began in 1916, when 150 thousand tons of coal were mined here a year, and the population was 3 thousand people. For 58 years, the concern has built here 30 high-rise buildings, schools, temples, a kindergarten, a hospital, a club for miners, swimming pools, a cinema and other facilities. There were about 25 stores alone. Finally, the silhouette of the island began to resemble the battleship Tosa, and Hashima got her nickname.

Residential buildings

The first major building on Hasim was the so-called Glover House, allegedly designed by the Scottish engineer Thomas Glover. It was commissioned in 1916. The residential building for miners was a seven-story building with a roof garden andshop on the basement floor and was Japan's first reinforced concrete building of this size. Two years later, an even larger Nikkyu residential complex was built in the center of the island. In fact, Hasima Island (photos of houses can be seen in the article) became a testing ground for new building materials, which made it possible to build objects of previously unimaginable scale.

In a very limited area, people tried to use any free space wisely. Between the buildings in narrow courtyards, small squares were organized for residents to relax. This is now Hasima - an island-sign on which no one lives, and at that time it was densely populated. The construction of residential buildings did not stop even during the Second World War, although it was frozen in other parts of the country. And there was an explanation for this: the warring empire needed fuel.

Wartime

One of the island's iconic structures is the "Stairway to Hell" - a seemingly endless climb leading up to Senpukuji Temple. It is not known what still seemed to the inhabitants of Hasima more "hellish" - overcoming hundreds of steep steps or the subsequent descent into the labyrinths of narrow city streets, often devoid of sunlight. By the way, the people who settled the island of Hashima (Japan) took the temples seriously, because mining is a very dangerous occupation. During the war, many miners were drafted into the army, the Mitsubishi concern made up for the lack of labor force with Korean and Chinese guest workers. Victims of a half-starved existence and merciless exploitation onthousands of people became mines: some died of disease and exhaustion, others died in the face. Sometimes people even threw themselves in despair from the island wall in a vain attempt to swim to the "mainland".

Recovery

After the end of the war, the Japanese economy began a rapid recovery. The 1950s became "golden" for Hasima: the Mitsubishi company began to conduct business in a more civilized manner, a school and a hospital were opened in the mining town. In 1959, the population reached its peak. On 6.3 hectares of land, of which only 60 percent were suitable for life, 5259 people huddled. Hashima Island at that time did not have a single competitor in the world in terms of such an indicator as "population density": there were 1,391 people per hectare. Tourists who today arrive on an excursion to the abandoned island of Hashima find it hard to believe that some 55 years ago, residential areas were literally packed with people.

Move around the "battleship"

Of course, there were no cars on the island. And why should they, if, as the locals say, getting from one end of Hasima to the other could be faster than smoking a cigarette? In rainy weather, even umbrellas were not required here: intricate labyrinths of covered galleries, corridors and stairs connected almost all buildings, so, by and large, people did not need to go out into the open air at all.

Hierarchy

Hashima Island was a place where a strict social hierarchy reigned. As well as possible, this was reflected in the distribution of housing. Yes, managermine "Mitsubishi" occupied the only one-story mansion on the island, built on top of a cliff. Doctors, managers, teachers lived in separate houses in two-room, rather spacious apartments with a private kitchen and a bathroom. Miners' families were allocated two-room apartments with an area of 20 square meters, but without their own kitchen, shower and toilet - these objects were common "on the floor". Lone miners, as well as seasonal workers, lived in 10-square-meter rooms in houses built here at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mitsubishi has established a so-called private property dictatorship on Hasima. The company, on the one hand, gave the miners jobs, provided wages, housing, and on the other hand, forced people to participate in public works: cleaning the territory and premises in buildings.

Dependence on the "mainland"

Miners gave Japan the coal it needed, while their existence depended entirely on supplies from the "mainland" of clothes, food, and even water. Here, until the 1960s, there were not even plants, until in 1963 soil was brought to Hashima from the island of Kyushu, which made it possible to establish gardens on the roofs of buildings and organize small vegetable gardens and public gardens in the few free areas. Only then were the inhabitants of the "battleship" able to start growing at least some vegetables.

Hashima - ghost island

Back in the early 1960s. it seemed that the island was waiting for a cloudless future. But as a result of cheaper oil at the end of the decade, coal production became more and moreunprofitable. Mines were closed across the country, and a small island in the East China Sea eventually fell victim to the reorientation of the Japanese to the use of "black gold". At the beginning of 1974, the Mitsubishi concern announced the liquidation of the mines at Hasima, and the school was closed in March. The last resident left the "battleship" on April 20. Since then, the abandoned city-island of Hasima, which has been rebuilt with such labor for 87 years, has been irreversibly destroyed. Today it serves as a kind of historical monument of Japanese society.

Tourist facility

For a long time, Khashima was closed to tourists, as the buildings erected in the first half of the 20th century were very actively degraded. But since 2009, the country's authorities began to allow everyone to the island. A special walking route was organized for visitors in the safe part of the battleship.

And not so long ago, Hashima Island attracted even more attention. A wave of interest rose after the release of the last part of the epic film about the adventures of James Bond, the British agent 007. Pinewood studio pavilions.

Virtual walk

Today, individual enthusiasts are making proposals for the reconstruction of the entire island, because its tourism potential is truly enormous. They want to organize an open-air museum here and include Hasima in the UNESCO list. However, toto restore dozens of dilapidated buildings, large financial costs are required, and the budget for this purpose is even difficult to predict.

Nevertheless, now anyone can wander through the labyrinths of the "battleship" without leaving home. Google Street View in July 2013 took a picture of the island, and now the inhabitants of the Earth can see not only the quarters of Hasima, which are currently inaccessible to tourists, but also visit the miners' apartments, abandoned buildings, view household items and things left by them upon departure.

Hashima Island is a harsh symbol of the birth of Japan's great industry, which at the same time clearly demonstrates that even under the rising sun nothing lasts forever.